


The Heart Handbook

by Miss_Cosmonaut



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, London, M/M, Mechanic Simon, Music Teacher Baz, Mutual Pining, Older Baz, POV Simon, Single Parent Simon, Slow Build, Slow Burn, because YES DADDY, kinkshaming myself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-22 04:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9583874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Cosmonaut/pseuds/Miss_Cosmonaut
Summary: Life as a struggling single parent isn't always that easy - especially when you live next to a struggling single music teacher who looks like witchery with a face.Plus he's hot. But that's beside the point.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's not betad and I hope you all have the best day ever!!
> 
> (Also, this is written from Simon's perspective because he's my cherry-scone-inhaling baby noodle and I will love him five-ever)

I watch her stumble down the sidewalk, loose shoelaces trailing behind her. She fits right into it, electric blue skies and good luck, this mid-July day. That's her. That's her, always. 

"Come on, Dad!" she shouts, skipping across the cracks in the pavement. From all the way here her hair looks like a bird's nest. I'm scared the pigeons burring by the shops might get the wrong idea. 

She tumbles towards the nearest bus stop bench, crawling up and standing on the edge on her tip toes. She tilts her head back, face flush in the sun. I smile when she opens her mouth wide. 

_('So it gets into my tummy faster! So I stay happy alltheallthealltheallthe time! So I can laugh more!'_ I call it funny. She calls it eating the sun for breakfast.)

"Come on! You too!" Trampling with her little feet, her giddy knees. She's wearing her rainbow tights today, the one that makes her look like a circus.

I jog up the sidewalk and jump up onto the bench. She rips her mouth a little wider, tugging at my T-shirt with a loud _'Aaaaah'._ I open my mouth, face tilted towards the sky, the vastness of it when there aren't any clouds around like it might just soar down to gobble us whole. I laugh.

"If we do this long enough, we'll glow in the dark." I nudge her cheeks. Candy apples. 

"They'll see us from space," she slurs with her mouth open wide. 

"They?" 

She narrows her eyes, smile growing, the gap between her two front teeth so inviting I feel like wedging a pinkie in it.

"Aliens," she says and leans her head against my hip. 

"Aliens." I nod. "Okay, love. Aliens."

Hoisting her up onto my shoulders on our way to the park, I realize how much I've been doing it lately, grinning when she starts to squirm and screech and tap rhythms onto my head like it's a bongo drum. Maybe because her birthday was a month ago. Maybe because it came along so fast I felt the whiplash. And it's awful,  realizing it can't stop, won't stop. Never. She keeps growing and I keep feeling guilty every time I pretend she isn't. Sometimes I'm scared I'll forget what she felt like, back when she was blubbering and hiccup-y, her whole soft smallness, her head in my palm. Next thing I know, she'll be talking about the universe and traveling and how many places you've visited for the last time, how you know you've fallen in love.

I think I'll miss these days the most, sleepy, easy things spent under oak trees and sun, Santo & Johnny's _Sleepwalk_ playing in lazy loops on my phone. (Daisy heard it in some chocolate bar commercial and she said it makes her feel like she's floating on a cloud - or lying on the biggest sheep of all time. It's the only thing that'll make her fall asleep during thunderstorms.) 

I remember when we first moved here, looking for the nearest park we could spend our afternoons in. I panicked after one of Daisy's teachers wouldn't stop talking about how nature deficit disorder stifles children's imagination during the last parent-teacher conference, because one mum wouldn't shut up about all those evil diseases outside and electrical outlets and black vans and junkie syringes in sandboxes, and how she keeps her son locked in his room all day because she's off her fucking trolley. I just sat there thinking about all the loony in Daisy's head and how maybe, impossibly, it could pour right out of her ears if she didn't spend at least an hour a day under a tree. And it's probably rubbish, but I'm not taking any chances. 

Turns out the only park near our flat looks like a landfill, small and unruly, reigned by empty soda cans and rusty swing sets, a few stray cats fighting in the bushes. There's a sandbox. I don't let her anywhere near it. 

The only person who ever comes here besides us is this woman who's either 40 or 80, homeless or lonely, and she feeds the pigeons even when it rains and there aren't any pigeons to feed. Daisy says she's cursed, stuck to that bench forever and condemned to some tragic bread-crumb-throwing cycle of doom. She keeps giving her our sandwiches when she thinks I'm not looking. 

I watch her play with the grass, her little fingers weaving the green between her knuckles, the dirt under her nails. I remember a time where her fingers looked like peas. She's flat on her stomach, legs kicking the air. That smile on her face, always there, constant and fuzzy, and she doesn't even know she's giving the world more than she should. 

I roll onto my back, reach out to touch her quirk of a nose, her splattered freckles. She tried to count them once, squatting in the sink of some sketchy motel bathroom, nose inches away from the mirror - _'Fifty-two, fifty-five, no…fifty…uh…three, four, fifty- six, fifty-five, fifty-six...' -_ and it took me twenty minutes to convince her she wouldn't be able to count them all at once. Her face is one giant confetti disaster. 

Daisy rolls over and flops her head onto my stomach. My hand is back in her hair, my eyes up in the trees, sun bursting through. It's the first good day in weeks, everything heavy with heat, glowing, buzzing. I feel her sway to the rhythm of _Sleepwalk_ , humming along. 

_One day I'll teach you how to slow dance to this. Once you're big enough to bump against my chin. Yeah...That's when I'll teach you. Let you stand on my feet while I whirl you through the living room,_ I think. 

"Blue or the ocean?" she mumbles, her voice lulling. 

"Hm…" I tap a short rhythm against her forehead. "Every shade of blue?"

"Yeah. Every shade of blue ever - or the ocean." 

"The ocean, then. It's alive."

"But the ocean is full of sharks." I snort. She reaches up to flick my nose and whispers, "I would've said blue."

I smile, tilting my head away from a shard of sun. I forgot to bring sunscreen. We'll both look like lobsters by the end of the day. 

"Uh…the sun or the moon?" I ask. 

Daisy likes this more than 'I Spy'. Mostly because she stares at her objects of pursuit for a minute straight and I have to pretend I don't know what she's talking about.

"The sun!" She flaps her hands towards the sky, batting at a swarm of mosquitos wallowing above our heads. "The moon's always crying. And that makes me sad."

"Why's the moon always crying?"

She shrugs, grabbing my hand and pretending to bite it.  "Dunno," she mumbles against my palm. I feel her teeth graze my skin. "Just 'cause." She bloats her cheeks and blows into my hand, giggling at the sounds it makes. "Ninjas or samurais?"

I snort. 

"Ninjas. Hands down."

"Yeah, they're invisible. They can fly."

I have to keep myself from telling her they're just really, really good jumpers. 

"Bloody brilliant," I say. "They're brilliant." I grin into the sun, feel it hit my teeth and crawl through the gaps. 

"Baz said samurais," she mumbles, kneading my fingers one by one. 

My eyebrows scrunch. "Baz?" 

That's a weird name for an imaginary friend. I always thought kids stopped talking to things that weren't there by the time they turned five. It used to scare me, watching her whisper secrets to vacant chairs. She went through the whole set-up-the-table-for-three phase because Princess Polkadot was coming over for dinner. 

"The man who lives next door," she says. "The one who plays the violin." She looks up at me, mouth going small the way it does when she feels guilty."The one you don't like."

I hoist myself onto my elbows. 

"Daisy." I feel my chest bloat."I told you not to- "

"He's nice!" She tosses my hand aside and worms her way onto my chest. She's so close our noses bump. Her eyes blooming. I watch a ladybug crawl across her forehead. "He said there were samurai girls! And all samurais were really smart. They were really good at maths. And rhyming."

"Rhyming." I deadpan. 

"They had to read a lot of poems." 

I blow at the ladybug, watch it buzz away. 

I think I'm almost mad at her for playing 'This or That' with a complete stranger. And not just any complete stranger. Daisy played 'This or That' with the tosser who chain-smokes on the fire escape and shoots me death glares in the stairwell. It doesn't help that he looks like witchery with a face. He's all grimoires and omens and your death on a taro card. I've thought about throwing garlic at him. Or holy water.  Plus he's fit. But that's beside the point. Completely. Because I'm already thinking about buying every gold cross in London. I'll make Daisy wear at least a hundred.

He lives in the flat right across from us, our fire escapes almost touching, living room windows so close I know what channel he's on. During our first month here, he always had the curtains drawn. Daisy would talk about the shadow slinking past the windows, a promise of mystery, wondering what kind of person might be dwelling in the dark: a retired astronaut, a psychic palm reader, a ghost. Then his violin would keep us up at night and she said we live across from  Niccolò Paganini. I don't know why or how a five-year-old would know about an Italian violinist who's been dead for over two centuries. She said the guy sold his soul to the devil to play the way he could. I think about our neighbor, his inky-ness, his violin, and deals with the devil don't seem that strange. 

"He said he'd teach me how to play the violin," she says, a small smile tip-toeing across her face, the flush of excitement making her fingers all grabby. 

_Great,_ I think. _A pedophile._


	2. Chapter 2

There are so many things I want to say to him, my brain one giant construction site of complaints -  _'Just because the way you play the violin sounds nice, doesn't mean you should play until five in the fucking morning!' - 'Your smoke is literally sitting in our living room!' - 'Stop talking to my daughter! Or I will scoop your eyeballs out! With a spoon! You pervert twat!_ ' - but then I'm standing at his doorstep, and he's big and looming, staring at me like he's about to stoop down and eat my face, and all I manage is: "Predator!" 

His eyebrows zoom up so fast they hit the ceiling.

"Pardon?" 

And I'm stomping back down the hallway, thinking about how fantastic it would be if the ground cracked to guzzle me down. 

"Hey!" He shouts after me. I just keep stomping and hoping. 

A door whips open two flats down, some droopy-faced man shouting for me to fuck off, his tiny puff of a poodle squeezing its head between his legs, growling. I flip him off. He spits. 

I love this place.

 

▴ ▴ ▴

 

Daisy gives me a weird look from where she's sprawled across the living room carpet. She's playing with that headless Barbie, the one we found in the last string of B&Bs we stayed at, tucked under the mattress like a dirty secret. She kept complaining about something poking her back. 

Rushing to the windows, I feel her stare on me as I rip the curtains closed so hard one of the hooks crack. 

 _Great_ , I think.  _One more thing we can't afford to fix._

"Promise me you won't talk to him again. No talking to strangers, yeah? I've told you so many times. So, so many times. No talking to strangers." 

"But he's not a stranger." Her face crunching into itself.

I know what she's thinking. It's been slathered across her face this whole past year - there to haunt me every time I dragged our suitcases out from under the beds, there to stare me down in rearview mirrors and gas stations, in bathtubs of sickly-lit motel rooms, there to spill out of her eyes every time I had to find an excuse for putting a cereal box back on the shelf. 

The last time I saw it was in that makeshift guest room doubling as a storage, because Penny's friend of a friend knew someone who could take us in for the night. And I didn't know if I should've felt thankful for not having to sleep in the damned car again...or ashamed for rocking my daughter to sleep in a room stuffed with canned food and laundry detergent and none of it ours. 

_What does this mean, Dad? What does this mean?_

I see it and I feel it, and it's become just as much part of her face as her smiles. And I hate it. It's the one thing I wish she'd never have to ask.

"He's not," she says again, louder now like she's scared she didn't reach me the first time. 

"He is. I don't know him."

"Just because you don't know him, doesn't mean I don't. You never let me talk to anyone. You won't even let me go to Jeanie's birthday." 

"Jeanie's parents are bonkers!" I hate raising my voice. I hate the way it makes her flinch, the way her eyes snap to my hands, the way she holds her breath and stares at them, trying so hard not to blink.

The thought of her thinking I would do such a thing, it makes my gut ache. 

"They don't believe in global warming." I dig my hands into my pockets. 

"But Jeanie doesn't." 

"Daisy."

She's standing now, that naked headless Barbie pressed tight against her chest. She's wearing my old Manchester United jersey. It's too big, and she's too small, and it's slipping off her shoulder, the freckles there like cupcake sprinkles. She looks at her bare feet, toes kneading into each other.

"Why do you always do this?" It's a mumble. But I catch it. I feel my stomach churn. She pulls the jersey up her shoulder but it slips back down. 

"Do what?" I say, like I have no clue.

She looks at my feet, my stomach, my throat, my eyes. She's so small she'd fit into my hands if I squeezed her hard enough. I swallow. 

"It's okay, Dad. I'm okay," she whispers. She sounds so much older than I want her to be. 

I shake my head, and I'm about to open my mouth when she drops the Barbie and rushes towards my room instead of hers. It makes me think she might not be that cross, but when I hear the door close with a quiet click, I know she is. With Daisy, silence is commotion, a whisper a tantrum. 

I never understood how you could be the polar opposite of your parents until it happened to me. Too early and too fast. And where I'm loud, Daisy's a barely. Where I'm red and angry, Daisy's careful and patient and full of good, good things. She's a quiver. I'm a fist punching through a wall. And her hands might be half the size of mine, but she's the bigger person. Always. Bloody always. She's good and I'm not, and maybe I like to think I did at least something right.  

I lean against the curtains until my back hits the window. I think of sneaking under the sheets once she's asleep. Sleepy Daisy doesn't hold a grudge. Not that Awake Daisy does either, not for longer than half an hour, that is. 

I slide to the floor. I shake my head. I stare at that headless Barbie until my eyes go fuzzy. 

 _'Why do you always do this?_ '

Her voice spiraling down my ears. My big T-shirt slipping from her ice-cream-scoop shoulder. Her freckles. Like mine.

 

▴ ▴ ▴

 

She's babbling in her sleep when I slip under the blankets. I pull her against my chest, my face in her hair. She glows in the dark. 

"Loveyou," I mush against her head, hope the words sneak their way inside, hope she'll feel them in there when the sun comes up and she eats it for breakfast. 

Why do I always do this? Because sometimes I think about that mum at the parent-teacher conference, the one with the beady eyes, the frantic hands, and the way she keeps her son away from all those terrible, marvelous things outside of his room, and I think of how those things can touch you and take you and last a lifetime. And I think of how Daisy's birthday was just a month ago and how she said that all we do in life is kill time before we die, and I asked her where she heard that and she said the telly but we don't have a telly. And I'm sure I didn't know those kinds of things when I was a five. I bet my head was so small I didn't know the world was bigger than our house and our backyard and the Mr. Patil's kiosk down the road.

I wonder how big Daisy thinks the world is.

I wonder if she already knows it's bigger than this, than her and me and my hand trying so hard to hold onto hers.

 

▴ ▴ ▴

 

He throws rocks at the window for five minutes straight - instead of just walking up to the door where I would've at least had the pleasure of slamming it in his face. 

"I'm giving you a chance to explain yourself," he says, all stately-calm, leaning against the railing of his fire escape with a fag between his fingers. He looks strange at night, carved out of it, a human Penny Blood. My stomach kicks. I don't want Daisy anywhere near this guy. 

He cocks his head to the side, eyebrows stopping. They're diabolical.

"Is this because I offered to teach Daisy the violin?"

I don't like him saying it, her name in his mouth. I want to punch his teeth in and tear it out of his brain. 

"Look, I don't think it's - "

"I charge 40 an hour." Like it's a done deal, that fag in his mouth, that smirk on him. 

_40 fucking pounds._

My eyes narrow. I try not to look at him for too long. He's got that rummage stare that reaches the back of your head. I feel him crawl in, look around, bug the place. I grit my teeth.

"Stop talking to my kid, yeah?" 

I'm about to slam the window closed when he stops me with a, "Hey!" 

I bite my tongue, watch him go giddy as he slicks a hand through his hair and looks at me so hard it hurts my eyes. He drops his fag. I watch it tumble down into the alley, gaping beneath our feet like a throat. It's so quiet it's almost unbearable, all the other windows black and yawning, lit by the neon sign of some tattoo parlor fizzing in the distance, blinking, purple-pink.

"Simon," he says. It's so calm it takes me by surprise. I look back up. "Is it?"

He doesn't sound the way he looks.

I take a deep breath and lean my head against the window frame. I nod. He nods. I fold my arms in front of my chest. He looks at his feet. They're bare. I don't know why him being barefoot turns him into something endearing. Like he might just be a little more ordinary, a little more forgivable.

He bows his head for a second, lets it dangle before looking back up. He puffs his chest.

"Look." One loud exhale. "I'm a music teacher at a school that makes so many budget cuts on instruments I've got an unenthused ensemble of prepubescent kids playing on percussion kits made out of milk cartons. And when I say unenthused, I mean these greasy-haired nobs would rather shoot themselves in the groin than watch me wave a bloody baton." His fingers shake. His head, too. He scoffs. "Sometimes I have to teach in the cafeteria because we don't have enough classrooms. I've got them bending triangles and, and - rearranging xylophone keys, ditching class to get high behind the fucking gym - " His breath catching like he's about to say more. He coughs, his head still shaking from side to side, eyebrows knitted. He scoffs again. It sounds like a cat sneeze. "So, when a child throws a rock at my window at three in the morning and asks me about Niccolò Paganini's life's work, I will give her the longest answer I can think of." 

His feet do this tappy thing, slapping against the metal below. 

I can't help it. I think of Mrs. Possibelf, my ninth year math teacher, losing her voice on a weekly basis because she had to punch her way through the constant chatter of who's shagging who. I don't think I liked her very much. I don't think she liked us either, us greasy-haired nobs ditching class to get high behind the fucking gym.

And I think of him, standing on a canteen table jerking his hands around like he's having a seizure. I think of all those bruised milk cartons. I catch myself smiling, barely, but maybe it's a sign I've already made up my mind about whether I should like this guy or not. Him and his whole barefooted-ness and cat-sneeze-sounding scoffs.

And then I think of me standing between Daisy and everyone else in the world. I think of that for so long I have to shake myself out of it when some woman two stories down yanks her window open and yells for us to shut up and get stuffed, her head a chunky mess of frizz and flexi rods. 

"Oh, bug off, Libby!" he yells right back.  

"Pratt!" Her windows slamming closed, the shudder spiraling up the fire escapes.

He rolls his eyes. "If you hear an infant being tortured at three in morning, it's probably her horny cat," he mumbles. I forgot his name. Something with a B. Something short and sharp, something that suits him more than it should. 

"She's a good kid," he says.

It takes me a while to remember what we were talking about.

"She's curious." He stares at his hands curled around the railing. I think he's smiling. Or maybe it's just the dark playing tricks. "Look, you don't even have to get her a violin. I've got - " His head shoots up when Daisy shouts a loud 'Dad!' from her bedroom. We must've woken her. Fucking Libby…

"I'll be right there, love." I stare at the gap in the door. Daisy never likes it closed. She needs a clear escape route when she hears something mumble under the bed. 

I wait a moment, thinking she might've fallen asleep again before I'm back to leaning against the window frame. 

"Yeah?" I breathe. I blink.  

He's still there, staring at me in the dark. Witchy. 

"I…um…" He clears his throat, eyes slinking past my shoulder to peer into our flat. I shuffle to the side, blocking the view. "I've got a few." His hand in his hair again. "Violins. I could lend her one."

I think of Daisy humming to  _Sleepwalk_ , the smile on her face, the sun in her gum-drop-tiny belly. 

_'He says he'll teach me the violin, Dad! The violin!'_

I know that look she gets every time she comes home from school, telling me about that Juniper kid going to Judo classes and gymnastics, about Chris, the one with the two mums, going camping every summer. 

She'll knead her toes and let her hair swallow her face. The kid on the sidelines with her second-hand clothes and her chopped-in-the-bathtub haircuts. She's never complained, but she's never said she was okay with it either. 

My cheeks puff. I hate this part. 

"I - Look, it's a nice offer, I guess. But…" I grip the back of my neck, feel the heat there, the way it bubbles. 

Maybe this time I should go with _'She doesn't have time, with school and all'_  or  _'She's changed her mind about it, you know, the way kids do'_. All these easy excuses tumbling through my head, a collection of them, filed and stowed away, so wonderfully reusable. All I have to do is pick one and turn my back, let the shame nibble away at whatever pride I have left. 

But I can't help myself from looking at him a little longer, his bare feet, his inky hair, his whole dark, warm strangeness. And I watch the pink light of the neon sign spill across his face, feel all this heavy mid-July heat, and I think of how the night can reel you in, the tricks it plays on you when it's too dark to think straight, the way it makes such little things far greater than they ought to be. Moon-magic. 

Maybe for the tiniest moment, I think I could get away with the truth.  

"I can hardly afford this apartment." I barely say it. There's an ugly itch on my tongue. I look at my feet. I look back up. "Thank you, though." And I think I really mean it, which is bonkers because he was a creepy pervert twat just ten minutes ago. "I'll make sure she won't bother you anymore."

I've shut the window when he shouts another, "Hey!"

I sigh and stare at him through my own reflection, my breath fogging up the glass. 

"You know your way around cars, right?" His voice muffled. "Heard you're a mechanic."

I wonder what else he's heard.

It's funny how I always thought people would be less interested in you in the city, but when it comes to bored old hags, you're worth being talked about even when you're scum. Or maybe especially when you're scum. No one in this place is safe from being buzzed about during whiskey-spiked tea time in Mrs. Gibbins' potpourris infested living room. She invited Daisy and me over for some apple pie when we first moved in. And she sat there in her little armchair, floundering between her little crochet pillows, babbling about how that couple in apartment 4D are reincarnated serial killers for sure because she can  _'sense these things'_ , she's got that  _'aura-reading intuition'_. I smacked my hands against Daisy's ears so hard she screamed.

I'm pretty sure Mrs. Gibbins is the kind of person who looks through your trash when she's got nothing better to do. 

I wonder if she's ever invited him over, forcing apple pie and rumors down his throat. I can't stop myself from imagining him sitting in her little armchair, awkwardly looming, staring at those cat pictures scattered across the walls with a tiny teacup in his lap. 

"How about you help me out with my car and I'll help Daisy out with the violin?" 

I snort. I can't help it. 

"Are you kidding?" I'm not sure if he heard it. 

"I haven't a clue about cars." His mouth cracks into a smile, and it unravels his head and fights away the night, and I stare at it, try so hard to hate it. Maybe I could if I weren't busy wanting to touch his teeth. Toothpaste commercial teeth. 

He cocks an eyebrow. It's a little less menacing with a smile. 

I glance over my shoulder, look at Daisy's cracked bedroom door, scrawly drawings taped across it, stickers and paper cut-outs. I imagine all the wonderful things her face would do if I said yes. Every feeling in the world bursting across her like fire-crackers. And I imagine the sound coming out of her mouth, that sun-belly laughter, and it makes me ache all over. It makes me want to give and give and give. 

"What do you say?" he asks, and his eyes so big, like Daisy's that day in the park, blooming.

He leans over the railing so far I'm afraid he'll fall right into the night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angsty backstory? Hahahahahahahahahaha yes. Angsty backstory.


	3. Chapter 3

"It's Tyrannosaurus!" Daisy chirps when she hears the knocking, tumbling to the door and yanking it open so fast the gust of air makes her hair fly.

I was in the middle of trying to rub those grease stains off her cheeks. Bringing her to work is a whole adventure on its own. Daisy's a master of escape. No matter how many times I tell her to stay in the office, she always manages to sneak out and wander around the shop, creeping under cars and stacks of tires, stuffing stray screws into her pockets like riches. She'll forget all about her greasy-black fingers, and she'll pick her nose, scratch her cheeks, and she'll look like a coal miner by the time she sneaks back to the office, cowering over the crayons and coloring pages Trixie, the receptionist, snags from the family restaurant next door.

"Hey, Nibble," he says, and her face bursts with a smile.

 _Great_ , I think. _They gave each other stupid nicknames._

The way she lights up when he steps into our flat - violin case in either hand, shirtsleeves rolled up like those lawyers on the telly - the way she prances around with that look she only gets on Christmas eve.

He gives me a nod. I give him a nod. I feel like straightening my back and puffing my chest, and I think about those documentaries about alpha gorilla rivalries and how dogs use their pee to mark their territory.

I realize I'm staring.

Clearing his throat, his eyes snap down to Daisy peeking up at him.

"What's that on your cheeks?" he asks, cocking an eyebrow.

Daisy's smile drops. She shoots me a guilty look.

"Crayon," she mumbles because she's decided to run with that story. I can still hear the jingle-jangle of those screws in her pockets.

It's quiet for a while, Daisy staring at the hole in her rainbow tights and Baz staring at Daisy's blotchy cheek and me not knowing what to do with myself because this is the first time we've had someone over. Ever.

And not just anyone - but the chain-smoking Wednesday Addams tosser who's weirdly likable but also not. Because his eyebrows. And his death glares. And his jeans. His bloody jeans. And they're nice jeans because they look nice on him, but maybe it's not the jeans that are nice, and I don't know why that makes me like him less. It shouldn't, but it does, but it doesn't. I don't know.

The longer I stare at him, the more I feel all this heat crawl up the back of my neck. The kind that makes me want to throw a sheet over this whole flat, hide the water stains and that star-shaped blotch on the flea-market carpet. I think about how we boiled sausages in the coffee maker because our stove broke and I had to wait until the end of the month before I could afford to fix it. I wonder if he'll ask Daisy where her room is and what his face will do when he finds out she sleeps in the storage.

(It was her idea. She said five-year-olds should have their own room. It's big enough for a mattress and she's small enough to love it. But still. It's the bloody storage.)

I feel like I might just shrink until I disappear.

Baz clears his throat. He does that a lot. I'm waiting for his head to whip up, for him to finally look around, to ask me things, to make me shrink and shrink until I disappear. But he doesn't. And I'm so thankful for it I almost think I could like him. 

He smiles at Daisy when he puts the violin cases on our bumpy sofa, opening them with a kind of eagerness that reminds me of a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat. And Daisy's face. I don't get to see it like that, ever. I stare at her until my eyes start to tingle, and maybe, just maybe, it's enough to make nothing else mean a thing.

He's so calm and so quiet with her, telling her all these wonderful things about making music, and when he glides his hands across the violins, I wonder if they're as warm as they look. And Daisy, staring up at him, how all the wonders in the world must be sparking through her head at once, her eyes so dreamy. Handing her the smaller violin, he tells her to be careful, and she says she'll treat it like she's holding a life. He gives me this look, and I don't know how to tell him about all the other things she says that sound too big to come out of a mouth that small.

He stands behind her, gently tucking the violin under her chin, his big hands around her small ones. I only hate it a little bit - because when the bow glides, she laughs so loud her skin glows.

And she's standing there, on that flea-market carpet with that star-shaped stain, her, with her rainbow tights and her head full of magic, and he's giving her something I've never been able to. A burning, a spark. She's never looked so alive.

I don't know if it's a trick of the light, but I see it on him too. 

 

▴ ▴ ▴

 

She crinkles her nose when I kiss her forehead.

"Did you have fun?" I whisper, tucking her in the way she likes, tightly wrapped like a caterpillar. ( _'So the monsters can't grab me at night…'_ )

There's that smile again, so bright I swear the sun's peeking through the gap between her two front teeth. She nods.

"So, so much." She takes my hands and presses them against her cheeks.

"So, so, so, so much?" I ask, squishing her face until she looks like a fish. She giggles.

"Soooo, so, so, so, so much!"

I smile, my fingers crawling from her cheeks to her hair, combing through those curls and gently detangling the knots.

We're both curled up on her mattress, squashed between pillows and blankets, picture books poking out here and there. Even though Daisy's room is as small as a shoebox, it's like being on another planet: glow-in-the-dark stars, the ceiling draped in scarves like a circus tent, crayon landscapes, finger paintings, shelves spilling over with flea-market toys and lost-and-found knickknacks, a rotating nursery lamp making clouds bounce across the walls.

It's a gypsy caravan, a vagabond's treasure chest.

"I knew you'd like him." Daisy's eyes all moony.

I feel my eyebrows scrunch and watch a cloud dance across her face before sighing, mumbling, "I don't."

"You do."

"A little."

"Only a little?"

"Yeah, like, barely even…a little…like, almost not even…" I feel ten again, lost for words. "He's kind of nice…I guess…" _Or rather, he's nice to you and that's all that really matters._

I think of his big hands around her little ones and the way he made her smile, and it's a nice thought until it isn't. There's this pang of something hot in my stomach. I don't know if I'm angry or jealous. Maybe both. Maybe something different entirely.

"How many times?" I ask.

Before today, I might've thought it was only once, Daisy whispering secrets to someone who isn't me. Secrets. I don't know why I think she told him secrets, but I don't think you look at someone like that without having trusted them with a heart-sized bit of yourself. And it's Daisy, good, good, gullible Daisy, who always feels like letting the whole world in, who gives too much and too fast. She doesn't know where to stop yet. She doesn't know how much it hurts when you realize you let the wrong person in.

"Hm?" She pulls at my earlobes.

"You two." I pull at hers, small like fruit drops. "How many times did you…talk? Or…when?" _Or about what? Niccolò Paganini? Samurais? The world? Do you ask him things you don't ask me? Do you trust him with things you don't trust me with?_

"At night," she whispers, and the way she says it, like something mystical, out of this world, something dangerously close to a fairytale.

She lets go. I feel fuzzy without her hands on me. I'm not whole at all. 

"When I can't sleep. And then sometimes…" Her quaky little breath. "Sometimes he can't sleep."

I picture her, owl-eyed, sneaking out onto the fire escape, letting her legs dangle over the dark, so dangerously, and he tells her not to do that because she might just fall right into the night.

"He's got no one to talk to." She makes it sound like the loneliest thing on earth.

I imagine him leaning over the railing. 

"I think...I think he's all alone," she whispers. 

I imagine her looking at him the way she looks at the moon.

"And that's not nice."

I imagine the two of them and all the secrets they share when the rest of the world is asleep.

"Not nice…" she says again.

And I nod, and I say, "No. No, it's not. Not at all."

 

▴ ▴ ▴

 

I slip out of Daisy's room once she's sound asleep and snoring. I don't know what to do with myself, wandering circles around the carpet until I come to a stop on the star-shaped blotch, trying to balance myself on it, toes kneading into the fuzz. The pink glow of the tattoo parlor the only thing to keep me company. Until it isn't. And I'm staring out the window, watching the light leak through his curtains, the shadow of him floating by.

I remember the first day we moved in, Daisy sitting on the kitchen counter, naked feet kicking the cabinets, a bowl of cereal in her lap, all her giddiness. And she looked out the window, at those strange curtains and those strange things behind them, and there was all this hopefulness flooding her face. She said it could be anybody. She said it could be anybody in the whole wide world and how could that not be the most exciting thing to ever matter.

And I think of how when you're so young, you long for things without caring why.

Maybe I understand. That feeling, that pressure in you, that unbearable, unreasonable hope that this somebody might just whisk those curtains aside and step out into the dark. And I think of Daisy, my curious, wonder-struck Daisy, stumbling towards the promise of it like a moth drawn to a flame.

 

 ▴ ▴ ▴

 

All color and sound, the Brixton street market pours into the alleys, fruit stands and spice baskets, clothes dangling under printed banners, everything humming and moving, jerking to life under the tents. I feel a little guilty being here without Daisy. This is her favorite place on earth, and if she could fit it all into her pocket or her heart, she would without a doubt.

I try to keep up with Baz, but he's already a million steps ahead, slinking through the crowd like a cat. He stopped waiting up for me two blocks ago because I kept getting distracted by all the food. And fuck him. I haven't had any lunch. Because I'm here, with him, doing this on my lunch break.

I stop at a stand selling malva pudding when I spot him flapping his hands at me, his eyebrows doing all these terrifying things that make me want to run away but also punch him in the face.

"Fine…" I groan, turning my back on the pudding and following him down a side street.

He rushes towards the garages stretched out under some flakey apartment buildings. It's the kind of place where you expect someone to sell bunk at every corner.

Baz kneels in front of a garage covered in dents and graffiti, fumbling to get the lock open, throwing glances over his shoulders like it's not his garage at all. When he yanks it open, he waves at me so frantically I catch myself doubting it's his. 

"Come on, get in!" A hiss.

I flinch. I keep forgetting the way he talks to Daisy isn't the way he talks to me or anybody else. I think he's only mystical and soft-spoken around curious kids in rainbow tights. The rest of the time, he just shoots you these glares that make you think he might just eat you alive.

I crawl under the cracked garage door, and I almost expect him to kick me in faster. He ducks in after me, yanking the door down with a kind of force that makes the metal shake.

Pitch-black. We're in the dark.

"If this is the part where you murder me, I swear to God, I will haunt the living hell out of you."

"Simon. If I wanted you dead, you'd be decomposing in a tub of lye by now."

"Okay, Walter White…"

"He used hydrofluoric acid. Everyone knows using a base instead of an acid is far more effective."

"You are terrifying."

"Good."

A light bulb sparks above our heads. Baz is leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He cocks an eyebrow. I roll my eyes. I'm about to ask him if he'd make a necklace out of my teeth when the car between us grabs my attention. 

I feel like sometimes things are too beautiful for you to know what to do with yourself.

"Wait." My head bursts. "Wait, is this - " And before I know it, I'm stumbling around, hands roaming the crumbly red paint job, the dust on the windshield, the rusty bumper. I feel like spreading myself over the hood and never leaving.

"No way," I mumble, kneeling, picking at a flat tire. "What series?"

He runs a hand through his hair, shrugging, working his teeth into his bottom lip. "Honestly, I only know it's a Jaguar and that's…Well, that's it."

I pop the hood. "Not just any bloody Jag! This is an E-Type!" I want to scream so hard my head cracks open. And it's like that time I saw Eliza Asfour in a sundress in year eight, the soft swell of her everything, or that one time Penny and I snuck into a Jake Bugg concert and the way I thought my heart was going to pop right out of my body.

"It's beautiful," I say.

This 5-litre V12 engine might make me cry. 

"I guess." And he's laughing, and I'm too caught up in this not to laugh right back, big and ferocious, because - "You guess?" I flail my hands over the engine. "You bloody guess?" This is ridiculous. He's ridiculous. I take a deep breath, and I don't know why I start to whisper, leaning in. "Be honest. Did you steal it?" 

"What?" His eyebrows shoot up. 

"How is this your car? Do you know how much this is worth? I mean, yeah, it needs to go through some repairs, but I mean - I mean, shit! It's a fucking treasure!"

He shuffles over, gesturing for me to move aside before slamming the hood back down. He's so close. I step away. "Look," his hands spread across the flaking polish, "it's a long story. But it's mine." He looks at me. "I swear. And I will not sell it. It's mine and that's it."

There's something in his face that makes him look half-there or half-something, and it looks like an accident, and I don't think Baz is prone to accidents. I look away so fast I feel dizzy. "Okay," I mumble after a puff of silence, kicking my foot against one of the flat tires.

He raps his knuckles against the hood, nodding. "I've got some money saved up. I just need some help. Don't know anything about…all of…this."

"You're gonna have to throw in a couple more violin lessons." I give him a careful smile. I never know how much I can get away with when it comes to Baz. 

"Gladly."

 _Gladly_. 

And for a moment, I forget the only reason he's doing this is because of Daisy - and this car, this bloody beautiful beast of a car. For a moment, I think he might be okay with me, and I might be okay with him and that maybe all of this is so very, very much okay. 

"Okay." I nod.

"Okay." He does too.

I stare at the driver's seat. I wonder what the leather would feel like against my back, all that glorious metal above and beneath me.

"Can I…" I trail off, my hand already grazing the door handle.

"Go ahead," he says.

And I'm in, fingers biting into the steering wheel, my foot jammed against the accelerator, and I imagine the wind whipping and the gravel under the wheels, that feeling of blasting away, never looking back. Not once. Not ever.

I'm so caught up in it I don't notice Baz sliding into the passenger seat until he slams the door closed. I'm buzzing all over.

He opens his mouth, and I expect him to say something, but he stares at my hands around the steering wheel in silence. I pull them back so fast he jerks. Maybe he's waiting for me to say something. But I don't know what to say. I never do. And he should know by now. You don't need to know me long to know.

I can feel him staring. My hands in my lap, picking at a grime stain on my coveralls. Maybe it's the lonely light bulb dangling above, the way it feels like it's two in the morning, the way it makes me drowsy and tingly. And I'm in a car with a dark warm stranger, and all these thoughts come tumbling down on me.

I look at the dust on the dashboard, the crack in the rearview mirror. I remember those nights where it was just headlights and the sound of the world rolling by. I think about the first boy I ever kissed, the clingy leather of the backseats, his clumsy hands, my clumsy heart, the way something inside of me wouldn't stop opening, the feeling of being wanted so much. It was the only thing that should ever matter. And maybe I miss it, the haziness of those nights where you're doing something for the first time and you think, impossibly, that everything in the world could happen for you.

I look at Baz, and I think he's nothing like that boy, no needy, awkward roughness that comes with being sixteen and terrified.

He's so calm in all this low light, and I stare at the space between his collar bones and the way it's dipped enough for my thumb to fit right into it. It's so quiet, and my mouth tingles, and I realize I haven't been kissed in a hundred years.

"Is there something on my face?" His voice floating out of his mouth. His mouth. I wonder if it feels the way he speaks. 

I snap out of it. I clear my throat.

"No…No, I just - " I suck in a breath, shake my head. I'm all blurred at the edges. "Never mind."

 

▴ ▴ ▴

 

I buy some malva pudding on my way back to work. I can't stop staring at these two kids strolling ahead of me, hands clustered, mouths meeting every few steps. Sometimes I think I don't miss it one bit, being all lovesick, moonstruck, letting someone fill up all the space in your body until you forget what you felt like alone. And sometimes I think I do. Just a little. Just enough to stand at our window at night stealing glances at his drawn curtains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaall aboard the pine train TOOT TOOT


End file.
